PINOY FILM REVIEW: BUYBUST
Review Director Erik Matti uses chaos as a metaphor for his antiestablishment sentiment in ‘BuyBust’, a full-on action movie
sequences are the weak points of ‘BuyBust’.
Award-winning Filipino director Erik Matti’s action-packed film, BuyBust, is perhaps as polarising as it is as jarring and cynical. It is a ‘statement’ film by the awardwinning director, a critic of the Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte. But whichever lens one looks at it from, the film is a noteworthy departure from the light-hearted features that currently dominate Philippine cinema.
There are no love stories, love interests or love triangles in this film. Nothing of that sort. Instead, one is treated to two full hours of hard-core action. The director himself describes BuyBust as his “first full-on action film” and his most ambitious project.
BuyBust, which premiered at the New York Asian Film Festival in June, tells the story of the misfortunes of a rookie police officer, Nina Manigan, played by Anne Curtis, who joins an elite squad of the anti-drug law enforcers. Almost the entire film is set within the space of a few hours during a night-time anti-drug operation in the maze-like interiors of a slum area in Tondo, Manila.
Manigan’s squad is directed to entrap a notorious leader of a drug syndicate operating in the area, but the operation fails miserably, and that is when apocalyptic mayhem is unleashed on the unsuspecting law enforces.
Trapped and massively outnumbered, Manigan’s team attempts to fight their way out of the area, but the odds are simply too great as hordes upon hordes of angry mobs emerge from every nook and corner of Tondo.
This is where the film gets somewhat fantastical and jarring as the entire sequence feels like watching a zombie apocalypse movie where the undead charge at the heroes with reckless abandon, except that in this case, there were no mindless walking dead but rather ordinary residents — mums, dads, grandpas and grandmas and even young children. This is probably the part that begs the question: what’s the point?
Of course, one will have to finish the film to reach the conclusion tion that Matti hopes to embed in his viewers. The 47-year-old director, who directed the award-winning films On The Job and Honour Thy Father, cleverly uses the chaos in the unbelievable sequences in the film as a metaphor for his antiestablishment sentiment.
In the film’s lead role, it’s quite refreshing to see Curtis do an action film. BuyBust also features MMA fighter Brandon Vera, who plays one of the anti-drug agents. is screening now in the UAE